For years now, brooms have been used for both interior and exterior floor cleaning procedures. Brooms come in all types and sizes, but the most common is the type that looks like an oversized paint brush (with corn bristles) and the long handle. In particular, the most widely used type broom today on interior floor surfaces is a plastic bristled broom having bristles cut on an angle to facilitate sufficient floor sweeping and has a long handle so the user can stand upright.
A disadvantage of brooms is that they can only sweep up dry soil of a rather large size and have no absorbative ability on dry or wet soils. Recently, new products have been introduced into the xe2x80x9chandled goodsxe2x80x9d market. These products are essentially disposable dust mops that will absorb dust and pet hair on hard surface flooring. These new implements use disposable, dry, nonwoven cloths sized approximately 10xe2x80x3 by 12xe2x80x3. These dry wipes are attached to a hard, flat, rectangular plastic mop head with an elongated handle. The cloths are discarded when dirty and a new one is attached. A recent variation is a wet wipe version for mopping kitchen and bathroom floors.
If one wants to damp mop or wash the floor the most common thing to do is to purchase another cleaning implement such as a xe2x80x9cstring mopxe2x80x9d or sponge mop to be used with detergent, water and a bucket. Mopping wood flooring requires additional and different cleaning agents.
An object of this invention is to provide a simple attachment that could be used with a broom or other cleaning implement to accommodate disposable wipes for use with virtually all hard surface flooring, dusting and mopping jobs.
A further object of this invention is to provide such a cleaning attachment which can be easily applied to the broom head covering the bristles and which can readily have either a wet or dry wipe detachably mounted to the attachment.
In accordance with this invention a cleaning attachment for converting a broom to a mop comprises a flexible cover having end sections interconnected by a central section. The cover would be placed around a broom head with the end sections fastened together to form an enclosure around the broom head. The central section would be located below the bottom of the broom head and includes reusable mounting structure on the outer surface of the cover at the central section to detachably mount a wipe to the outer surface below the broom head thereby converting the broom to a mop. The wipe would be detached after one or more uses so that a different wipe could replace the original wipe.
In a preferred embodiment of this invention the mounting structure structure on the outer surface of the central section is in the form of hook members of the known hook/loop VELCRO(copyright) construction. A preferred wipe is a needle punched material having loops that would be caught by the hook members on the cover. The wipes could be either wet wipes or dry wipes. The cover could be a flat sheet which when placed around the broom head, forms an open sided enclosure. The size of the flat bottom central section could be increased by folding portions of the end sections and then securing the folded portions to the central section. In a variation of the invention the cover is of a bag type that completely encloses the broom head. If desired, the cover could be impregnated with a cleaning composition.
The attachment could be used for cleaning implements other than the above described broom. For example, the attachment could be fastened to a mop, such as a sponge mop, so that the sponge mop (which ordinarily would be used wet) could be used as a dry mop for dusting purposes. The cleaning implement may also take other forms such as a large industrial/institutional push broom.